Monday, April 10, 2017

Mon Apr 10th Todays News

Some things should not happen, but they do. Almost a year ago I was given Hobson's choice by Dandenong Courts to accept a mediation agreement with a pedophile ice addict who had terrorised me and taken my ID. I had been assured by the court mediation officer that I could rescind it at any time within the year and get a permanent order. Today I faced the duty clerk and was asked to provide an example of a transgression. I am not aware of any, and so the voluntary protection order will lapse and I have no recourse should my ID be exploited by the contacts the pedophile ice user has. That is an illustration of what is wrong with Dan Andrews' Victoria. The police know who he is, and where he is, but they can do nothing. And the papers can report the statistics which won't include my issue because Dan Andrews has hidden it. And Dan Andrews will have done that for a lot of ice using pedophiles. I am very good and don't deserve the abuse given me. I created a video raising awareness of anti police feeling among western communities. I chose the senseless killing of Nicola Cotton, a Louisiana policewoman who joined post Katrina, to highlight the issue. I did this in order to get an income after having been illegally blacklisted from work in NSW for being a whistleblower. I have not done anything wrong. Local council appointees refused to endorse my work, so I did it for free. Youtube's Adsence refused to allow me to profit from their marketing it. Meanwhile, I am hostage to abysmal political leadership and hopeless journalists. My shopfront has opened on Facebook.Here is a video I made Envoy
Francis Thompson (16 December 1859 -- 13 November 1907) was an English poet and ascetic. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but in menial work, became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book, Poems in 1893. Francis Thompson lived as an unbalanced invalid in Wales and at Storrington, but wrote three books of poetry, with other works and essays, before dying of tuberculosis in 1907.

=== from 2016 ===

An inner city Green in Sydney denounces police sniffer dogs being used to find drugs in the broader community, including rave parties where they have been effective in preventing deaths. The media are happy to carry her memes to the wider public. Some ADL type scum take it upon themselves not to argue with the idiot Green, but abuse them on social media. Helen Dale, wife of SMH editor David Dale gets information that these ADL types include police. So Helen Dale, including the acronym ACAB (All Cops Are Bad), has said she wishes to expose the 'police corruption.' Interestingly, Dale says she would not employ 18c as it is a federal statute for what she feels is a state issue. She also says that 18c is not good at some things, and provides, among a few examples, "Does the Jewish lobby in Australia or elsewhere milk the historical fact of the Holocaust to leverage political advantage for Israel? If so, is this morally legitimate?"Apparently Dale does not respect Jews, or like it that sniffer dogs prevent teen deaths. For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.

=== from 2015 ===

It is ok to die old and blessed, and Richie Benaud achieved it. But then he had often achieved much in the world of competitive, team sports. His father had once taken all ten wickets in a first grade match. Taken to the SCG to watch Don Bradman bat, Richie saw Clarrie Grimmet claim 7 wickets in an innings and became enamoured with spin bowling. Richie was often selected in his younger days as a specialist bat who could bowl, he finished as a world class leg spin bowler who could bat. But at the age of 34, in 1964, Benaud retired. He had a shoulder which had worn over the years and medicine wasn't up to keeping him playing. But the imaginative, aggressive captain turned to the BBC and journalism. Showing the dedication, flair and hard work which underpinned his playing career, Richie became the voice of cricket. Early in his test career, Richie hit the third fastest test century to the date (in terms of time, not balls faced). He captained Australia against Frank Worrell's West Indies in the first ever tied test. He finished his career with Australia's then record highest test tally of 248 wickets. He loved cricket.But from blessing to tragedy in Leeton, NSW, where a popular high school teacher who had left work for another teacher, relieving them of duty, as she prepared for her wedding, was instead murdered by what seems to be a school cleaner. The wedding was scheduled for tomorrow, but last Sunday she disappeared after 1pm at the school. The cleaner apparently has a photo on his phone of her dead body. Also it is said he had the keys issued to her to open the classroom at the school on a Sunday. The cleaner has been arrested. Nothing is known of his past history suggestive of this tragedy. Her car is missing. And if it is ok to die old and blessed, the enormity of tearing away life from a young person is a higher measure.A US cop is still being pursued mercilessly by a racist crowd convinced he should be convicted of murder. No evidence yet shows why. He shot a man 8 times as they were running from him. That isn't proper behaviour of a policeman. But we don't yet know why or what happened. There was nothing in his past suggesting he would. And so it could be in the line of duty. What is clear is that it is dangerous to resist arrest. If it is the case the deceased had resisted arrest and proven a threat, then the policeman needs to be exonerated.

From 2014

It was a throw away line from me during class but it really offended a few students who insisted on getting their opinion out there. One trenchant Islamic apologist had made comments like "The US is collapsing like Rome did," "Australia is terrible with her treatment of refugees," and "America is chasing oil money engaging in war in Iraq." It was 2002, and President Bush had remarked how it was strange that when the world had clear examples of the triumph of Capitalism over Communism, yet still socialist advocates denied reality and embraced fascism. So I pointed to the example of Vietnam and said she was a great people with a despicable government and that the government would not last forever, but their people would prosper. Not a Mathematics related topic, but my kids did well enough in that, so that it would not be productive of me to push that harder, but hearing balanced debate on current issues wouldn't harm. One Chinese ethnic girl said "What about China? Those people are great too." I replied "Yes, but Chinese bureaucracy is a different thing altogether. A great people, but as Tiananmen Square has illustrated progress would be slower than Vietnam."The US certainly resembles the last days of Rome under Obama, but that is temporary. Soon, he will be a lame duck President. Then there will be rebuilding. Australia was generous with refugees under Howard, and the Pacific Solution is clearly fairer than the ALP alternative. The US clearly did not pursue Iraq for oil, but those that hate America will continue to make the claim. They have claimed the US should not have toppled Hussein. When it comes to that debate I know the side of reason. But a tragedy happened on this day in 2010 which illustrates the greatness and resilience of a people long subjugated by communism. Margaret Thatcher died yesterday last year, but the tragedy of the death of Lech Aleksander Kaczyński and company will be long felt. He was President of Poland, and many serving people from the administration died alongside him in the crash at Smolensk in Russia. Kaczyński was a conservative and he had left a vision of a free and fair Poland that has not been forgotten. They have worked hard to address the endemic corruption which was part of the Soviet era. They make stupid mistakes at times, like the one where they opposed male circumcision, but it is a dumb mistake that is their own, not imposed by a foreign dictator bent on socialism. Conservatives don't agree on everything everywhere, that is something the left try to do. But Conservatives tend to those vital areas which foster freedom and bolster cultural assets. The king dies, but the kingdom goes on. And a great people will not be denied. It is my hope that the great people of Poland will not forget their Jewish peoples. They cannot raise the dead, but they must allow all their people to prosper, not merely a few.

This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.

===

I am publishing a book called Bread of Life: January.

Bread of Life is a daily bible quote with a layman's understanding of the meaning. I give one quote for each day, and also a series of personal stories illustrating key concepts eg Who is God? What is a miracle? Why is there tragedy?

January is the first of the anticipated year-long work of thirteen books. One for each month and the whole year. It costs to publish. It (Kindle version) should retail at about $2US online, but the paperback version would cost more, according to production cost.If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofund.me/27tkwuc

Happy birthday and many happy returns Sean K Fitzgerald,Jimmy Leand Defqon Tran. Born on the same day across the years. The same day as when in 1815 a volcano (Mt Tambora) erupted and drove the temperature down an estimated two degrees centigrade for two years .. just like global warming has done for ten years.

In which a Greens MP learns what it's like to be David + staff. Welcome to the club.And they wonder why people start...
Posted by Helen Dale on Saturday, 9 April 2016

Helen DaleThat's only a civil claim, not a criminal one, and it's Federal, not State.

I'd be going for harassment, misuse of a communications device (or the NSW equivalent), stalking - that sort of thing. The problem with 18C isn't that it leads to prosecutions (it doesn't), but that it chills debate.

The following are all legitimate topics for debate that are undermined by 18C:

1. Are pale-skinned Aborigines scamming the welfare and grants system? Should we have a regime - like, say, Native American nations do - of mandating a certain percentage of indigenous ancestry before claims on the fisc can be made?

2. Does the Jewish lobby in Australia or elsewhere milk the historical fact of the Holocaust to leverage political advantage for Israel? If so, is this morally legitimate?

3. Are people from certain religious groups poorer quality immigrants measured across a range of indices than immigrants from other religious groups?

18C is not the right tool here; the ordinary state-based criminal law is to be preferred.

Miranda Devine – Saturday,April 09,2016 (11:37pm)

BILL Shorten’s pitch for voters is ridiculous. It’s Gillard Mark II, and we know how well that went.

There he was, our preposterous Opposition leader, in his oversized suit-jacket, bobbing around like a Thunderbird on the stage of the Redcliffe RSL in Brisbane on Thursday night at the Sky News-Courier Mail people’s forum.

The fake “empaffy” was laid on “ffick” as the proverbial swinging voters in the audience asked him how he could spend more money on their problems, and he naturally obliged.

It was free money like water he was spraying around. Just like the good old days of Kevin Rudd’s $900 cheques and free pink batts.

Shorten has promised $100 billion in new spending so far, to be paid for with more magic-pudding taxes. There’s Gonski money for schools, more for health, more for the NBN, subsidies to employ older workers, more on childcare.

He’d even prop up the ailing steel industry in South Australia with “co-investment”.

You name it. Shorten will spend it, although he avoided using the words “spend” or “tax”.

Instead he promised to: “allocate more money to the childcare priority”; and “stomp” on private health insurers.

“Providing a fair go for all is good economics.”

“Treating women (with)
equity and fairness is good economics.” What does that even mean?

“I, for one, haven’t swallowed a right-wing economic textbook.” No kidding. More like Das Kapital.

Shorten claims he’ll get a lot of the money for his new promises by slugging smokers. Really. So he doubles the cost of a packet of cigarettes to $40, who is going to buy them? Smokers will just start smoking more cheap chop-chop from the booming illegal tobacco market. Or they might kick the habit. Either way, all the money Shorten thinks he will squeeze out of nicotine ­addicts won’t materialise.

The same goes for his “soak the rich” fantasies, from superannuation taxes to capital gains and negative gearing. People aren’t mugs. They will spend their money in different ways and the geese that lay those golden eggs will vanish.

We already have more than $400 billion in “fantasy promises” — as Treasurer Scott Morrison calls them — baked into the budget for the next decade which have to be paid for, since no government is game to ­un-promise them.

Gillard’s most audacious ­unfunded promise, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, just keeps growing, with Scott Morrison admitting an extra $6 billion a year has to be found, even while every ailment from autism to obesity is clamouring for inclusion.

And it’s not as if all this free government money does much good, apart from fuelling a bureaucratic leviathan.

Childcare fees keep rising in step with government subsidies. And the more we spend on education, the worse our students perform.

It’s clear Labor has learned nothing from its past disasters.

Shorten has perfected the art of brazening through the most transparent hoax, with a fake smile fixed on his face, and with him is the same old gang from the Rudd-­Gillard years: Bowen, Plibersek, ­Albanese, Wong, Conroy et al.

Nothing’s changed.

But he’s getting away with it.

He and Sam Dastyari, of all ­people, have such chutzpah they are now prone to giving little lectures on ethics, and no one laughs in their face.

In the end, there will be no one left to fund all the mendicants, as Robert Menzies’ warnings come to pass, and we succumb to the “overlordship of an all-powerful State on whose benevolence we shall live, spineless and effortless”.

In 1942, just as today, capitalism was on the nose, and Menzies was warning against the false promise of socialism in his fabled “Forgotten People” speech.

“If the motto is to be ‘Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you will die, and if it chances you don’t die, the State will look after you; but if you don’t eat, drink and be merry, and save, we shall take your savings from you’ — then the whole ­business of life will become ­foundationless.”

Just as it was then, it is the case today, that capitalism isn’t just a machine that pumps out money.

It depends on people of virtue, discipline and good character, who Menzies called “the great and sober and dynamic middle-class — the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones”.

More than ever they are the forgotten people, the squeezed middle classes, who are supposed to fund the fantasy promises of politicians, even as their self-reliance is eroded by those promises.

We glimpsed another path last week, when the UK government’s Business Secretary Sajid Javid told a Sydney Institute dinner that he was a “a proud capitalist” because “for hundreds of years capitalism has been lifting people out of poverty”. He listed the Cameron government’s achievements, including bold welfare reform and slashed taxes, which have led to economic growth and job creation outpacing the rest of the G7.

The head of the OECD, Angel Gurria, described the UK economy last year as “remarkable” and a “text book job” for other nations. “What a difference effective economic policies can make.”

Too cowed to laud capitalism, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison last week offered the novel proposal that the government needs to “live within our means”.

This is derided by political commentators as lacking reformist zeal, but Labor has sapped our appetite for adventure.

And now there are conservative voters who say they prefer Shorten to Turnbull, who they believe is a left-wing cuckoo in the Liberal nest. They would rather a Labor cuckoo that taxes them to death.

Tim Blair – Sunday,April 10,2016 (2:50pm)

Bruce Springsteen on Friday cancelled an upcoming concert in North Carolina because of a controversial anti-LGBT law that critics say legalizes discrimination …

North Carolina’s Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act allows governments to discriminate against people based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and prevents municipal governments from creating local laws that would offer these groups protections. Under the law, all public institutions must post signs designating that bathrooms and locker rooms are to be used only based on biological sex.

In other words, the law discriminates against the likes of men who want to hang around in women’s bathrooms. How dreadfully unfair. Incidentally, it could well be that Bruce Springsteen applies a discriminatory policy on the use of his private dressing room, which is only available to people who are biologically Bruce Springsteen. Bad luck to all you freaks who merely identify as Springsteen. In any case, by the time Bruce finally consents to play in North Carolina, Born to Run will surely have undergone one hell of a re-write:

We gotta get out while we’re young

‘Cause tramps like us, baby we were born respectively as a cis gender male assigned male at birth and a cis female assigned female at birth although obviously that entire binary concept supports outmoded privilege structures that do not recognise the legitimacy of sexuality’s fluid reality which should allow people to wander into any toilet they please based on how they identify at that precise moment in time.

Tim Blair – Sunday,April 10,2016 (3:02am)

Evidently the ABC employs so many victims of domestic violence that they require their own special leave allowance category – which is interesting, given how many ABC employees are married to or shacked up with other ABC employees. What kind of carnage-strewn bloodhouse are they operating over there? Is that why ABC staff work so few hours – because they’re always recovering from the previous night’s beatings? Why are staffers not pressing charges instead of seeking leave? They also want fancy new iPhones:

But they also want the right to disconnect those iPhones when it suits them:

ABC staff should have the “right to disconnect” from phone, email and other messaging ser-vices, the public sector union says.

The Commonwealth Public Sector Union is pushing for staff to turn off digital technology “when at home ...”

Home is the last place they need to be. That’s where the violence happens.

UPDATE. Staff barbecues are a major cause of ABC workplace absenteeism:

Tim Blair – Sunday,April 10,2016 (2:45am)

The panic down the phone was almost palpable. “These people are capable of anything. They are zealots.” The veteran Liberal, who sits in a marginal seat, wasn’t talking about the Taliban or Daesh. He was talking about the Delcons, the rigid conservatives within the Coalition who still believe Tony Abbott and his agenda is what Australia wants and needs. Hence the moniker: Delusional Conservative; Delcon for short …

Even if Turnbull does finally get his act together he has to worry that the Delcons won’t morph into Daleks and prematurely exterminate his political career.

Turnbull was actually described as having been a fox who masterfully called the states’ bluff on raising more taxes, and had cunningly spent months of apparent indecisive inactivity in actually planning the double dissolution ambush. So successful were these “triumphs” that Turnbull destroyed the Liberals’ poll lead.

Tim Blair – Sunday,April 10,2016 (1:08am)

A Liberal member of Camden Council has declined to read an “acknowledgment of country” before meetings for more than three years, prompting a claim her actions are “disrespectful” to the Aboriginal community.

Cr Penny Fischer has declined to read the acknowledgment, which recognises the local Dharawal people as the traditional owners of the land, since the council adopted the practice in late 2012.

Good for her. A leftish friend once spoke on several panels at a writer’s festival. Each time he took the stage a welcome to country speech was waiting on the lectern. He swept them aside, rightly regarding the ceremonial words as insultingly tokenistic when far graver Aboriginal issues deserved more attention.

Speaking of which, readers will recall Britain’s Rotherham disgrace, when politicians and police turned their backs on the sexual torture of young girls by gangs of Pakistani men. According to Josephine Cashman, chair of the Indigenous Advisory Council’s Safe Communities Committee, an identical situation is occurring in Australia’s remote Aboriginal communities:

Her crucial line, which echoes accounts from Rotherham:

There are many examples I’ve come across where the police will not intervene to protect womenbecause they are concerned with cultural issues.

At one point ABC millionaire white guy and j’ism expert Jonathan Green tries mansplaining Aboriginal violence to an Aboriginal woman, but that’s not important. Further from Cashman here.

The politicians running our refugee programs - and the journalists cheering them on - have betrayed the national interest:

A gang of armed men have terrorised a man in his Keysborough home before stealing his car and fleeing. Police have been told a gang of six to eight men broke into a house on Stafford Street about 6am on Sunday morning… Detectives from the Greater Dandenong crime investigation unit said two of the men involved in the aggravated burglary were described as African in appearance.

A MAN was killed and another critically injured in a shooting at an industrial estate in Sydney’s west yesterday. Safwan Charbaji, 35, died after he was shot in the chest outside A Team Smash Repairs in Condell Park just after 1pm… The other victim, Abdullah El Masri, 35, remains in a critical condition in Liverpool Hospital. He was shot in the jaw…Asked whether the incident was drug or gang related, Detective Inspector Glen Fitzgerald said “I don’t believe there were any innocent bystanders, put it that way”.

One by one the Turnbullites fall.
The latest example? The preselection for the Liberals’ double dissolution Senate ticket in Tasmania, as ratified by the party’s State Executive.
Top spot goes to Eric Abetz, the conservative sacked by Turnbull from the ministry, with a whopping 60 per cent of the primaries from a field of seven candidates. Massive win.
Second spot goes to Senate president Stephen Parry, who has lately been emphasising his conservative credentials.
Third spot goes to newcomer Jonathon Duniam, another conservative and a former child care operator and deputy chief of staff to the Premier.
Fourth is Senator David Bushby, another strong conservative.
Fifth is Tourism Minister Richard Colbeck, who as the only Minister on the list would have hope for better. But he is Turnbull’s man in Tasmania - reputedly the only Tasmanian Liberal MP not to have voted for Tony Abbott.
Sixth is another conservative, farmer John Tucker.

Sources on both the right and the left of the Liberal Party believe [Bronwyn] Bishop’s support is crashing [in the preselection race for Mackellar].The right believes some of her former support base is swinging in behind Walter Villatora, the candidate backed by former prime minister Tony Abbott. On one estimate from the right, Mrs Bishop has less than 25 votes [among the 96 preselectors] and Mr Villatora and Jason Falinski, who has the backing of [Left wing Liberal] powerbroker Michael Photios, are both ahead.

If, however, Australia’s political leaders feel that it’s easier to pander to the xenophobic tendencies of some in our community by expelling “illegal” migrants in vast numbers, or loading the judicial dice to ensure the sick, the old and the ailing have one more hurdle to jump before being allowed to stay here, then they are doing our nation a disservice and damaging our long-term economic and social interests… Finally, there is the moral argument. How many of us would voluntarily choose to pay thousands of dollars to sit on the bottom of a leaky boat for months on end to be dropped off in another country where we know no-one and do not speak the language? It is not something that we, as a nation, should shun, but rather welcome as an affirmation of our nation in the eyes of the truly needy… By removing the restrictions on those wishing to move to Australia we would improve our prospects in growing our market. We’d improve our networks and innovation. And we’d make ourselves once more relevant to the world. History has shown that those countries that warmly embrace new migrants enjoy these outcomes. Australia’s stance should be clear - let them come, and hope they stay.

But many will feel the risk with sticking with Tony Abbott is that he can be a divisive figure, taking the party he leads too far right. It’s the Conservative Party, not the Liberal Party. His convictions are steadfastly moral. They are not policy driven (unless written down). There’s only small – but measurable – doubt that Tony Abbott would beat [Gillard]. However, Malcolm Turnbull would be a near certainty. That’s why I’ll take early and lucrative odds – just for bragging rights.

The former Liberal staffer was an endorsed 2002 Tasmanian Liberal candidate for the state seat of Denison before being disendorsed over the asylum seeker issue. Became an unsuccessful Democrat candidate at the state election in 2002. In 2013 emerged as a Wikileaks party spokesperson…

Step forward Jason Falinski who has nominated to become Warringah’s first popularly elected mayor under the banner of “Warringah 08”. If he misses out on the mayoralty, he’s also standing to become a humble councillor. “Warringah 08” is a Liberal trojan horse and Falinski is seeking the mayor’s position so he can launch the next stage of his ambitious political career in federal or state parliament.The likely targets of Phase II are Brad Hazzard’s state seat of Wakehurst or Bronwyn Bishop’s federal seat of Mackellar.Falinski has a chequered history in the Liberal Party. He is one of the chief spear carriers for The Group, the “wets” whose titular federal leader is Joe Hockey and whose state chief is former NSW minister Michael Photios… A former president of the blue ribbon Point Piper branch, Falinski was campaign manager for merchant banker Malcolm Turnbull when he blitzed the seat of Wentworth at the 2004 election.

The Federal Government have confirmed Western Australia will receive almost half a billion dollars from the Federal Government to ensure the state’s share of the GST is the same as two years ago. The Turnbull Government will invest an additional $490 million into WA infrastructure in 2016-17, saying it wants to ensure the investment helps reduce congestion, improve safety and strengthen growth and job creation.

I have quoted before this conservative principle, taken from di Lampedusa’s brilliant novel The Leopard:

If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.

Last night, reading the fine - if iconoclastic - biography of Disraeli by Douglas Hurd and Edward Young I was startled to discover that the Conservative British Prime Minister had got there first. From Disraeli’s speech in Edinburgh in 1867:

In a progressive country change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines.

60 Minutes travelled to Lebanon to film Ms Faulkner’s attempt to take [back her two] children [from her ex-husband] using a controversial child recovery agency. But the attempt backfired when the child recovery agents were arrested shortly after they snatched the children from their paternal grandmother at a Beirut bus stop…The 60 Minutes crew were also arrested and are facing allegations that the program paid more than $100,000 to the child recovery agency to facilitate the recovery.60 Minutes did not respond to Fairfax Media’s request for comment but is reported to have denied the claims, which have allegedly been made in a signed statement given to authorities by one of the detained child recovery agency employees. Fairfax Media understands there is documentary evidence of the payments, which were to be made in instalments to the agency. Ms Faulkner has vigorously denied being involved in hiring the child recovery agents or paying them.

MALCOLM Turnbull won the lottery this week with a Newspoll that hinted for the first time he could lose the election. It worked wonders for his discipline, with the PM finally grasping it is best not to wing every press conference with pollywaffle and a smile.

The counter-examples, though, have not been not slow in coming. Take this astonishing interview Turnbull gave on Thursday to the very sympathetic Eddie McGuire and his Triple M team.
McGuire had really been looking forward to this:

But no wonder the transcript isn’t up on Turnbull’s website. The Prime Minister finally had something to sell - his big plans for Melbourne’s transport system - yet meandered and waffled so extraordinarily that in a 10 minute interview the normally garrulous McGuire and his offsiders got to ask just three questions.
Turnbull kept talking to the Triple M audience - skewing young, tradies, politically disengaged - about “value capture”, “capturing value”, “financial complexity”, “urban amenity” and giving Melburnians places “where they can recreate”. He outlined the theory of “30-minute cities” and in a glorious highlight sold his Melbourne Metro transport plan as “a holistic urban project, not just a piece of linear infrastructure from A to B”. Oh, and then mentioned “capturing value” a few more times for luck.
Then came the post-interview discussion between hosts Eddie McGuire, Luke Darcy and Mick Molloy. McGuire wanted to stay nice, but what he’d just undergone was too obvious to deny for long.

Luke Darcy: Prime Minister, you’ve done something that none of us can do on this show – Eddie can’t even get a word in on his own show! This is new ground for us. We normally don’t get a word in, but even Ed’s been sidelined! This is an extraordinary performance.Eddie McGuire: Yeah you’ve got that 10-second grab down, prime minister! We understand exactly what you’re saying there… We hope to get you back on the show and into the studio next time you’re in Melbourne.Prime Minister: Look forward to it Eddie, thanks a lot.Eddie McGuire: Good on you. Malcolm Turnbull joining us on Triple M…Mick Molloy: Forget the 30-minute city. I’ve just been through a 30-minute answer!Eddie McGuire: By the way, while Malcolm was talking to us there, Jason Day dropped four strokes in the Masters, literally. He’s had his first triple bogey ever and had a bogey before that so he’s had a horror two holes in a row…Luke Darcy: I think the Masters has been run and won I think in that interview.Mick Molloy: You were watching that during the PM’s answers were you, Ed ?Eddie McGuire: Mate, I actually played 18 holes!Mick Molloy: Extraordinary.Eddie McGuire: Yeah it was. We might get the abridged version later…Luke Darcy: We put the clock on Malcolm’s last answer, Ed, and I believe he had a lot more in the tank… Three minutes 30 and he was still going… They get into political speak and you just fall asleep… Mick Molloy: I had no idea ... I tuned out.

And so on.
Reader A:

This is telling. If Turnbull puts people to sleep with waffle on commercial radio when he actually had something to sell, how is he going to go on a three month election campaign, where you have to engage with these audiences every day?

An ungracious and ungenerous man just creates a new and damaging diversion.
Speaking at the Victorian Liberal State Council Malcolm Turnbull thanks the “Liberal giants” who have allowed him to see further - Sir Robert Menzies, John Howard and, “from the Victorian division” Peter Costello, Peter Reith, Kay Patterson, Richard Alston, Rod Kemp and David Kemp. Even Speaker Tony Smith gets a long panegyric.
“They are our foundation...”
Not a word of praise for the Liberal without whom there would have been no Prime Ministership for Turnbull to steal - Tony Abbott. No wonder there was no applause.
It was a failing that reminded me strongly of this similarly ungracious moment:

KEVIN Rudd has been airbrushed from Labor history, with Julia Gillard refusing to acknowledge him in a speech to the ALP national conference in Sydney yesterday. While Mr Rudd sat smiling in the front row of the Darling Harbour Convention Centre auditorium, Ms Gillard named and paid tribute to former Labor prime ministers since 1940 John Curtin, Ben Chifley, Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. The only names missing from the roll-call were Mr Rudd’s and Frank Forde, who only served eight days in 1941.

UPDATE
The ghost of Abbott is inadvertently summoned up again when Turnbull criticises Labor leader Bill Shorten as having an agenda that is “the Gillard agenda with a new coat of paint”.
No applause again. Bet you most of the audience was thinking that Turnbull’s agenda was just Abbott’s.

Tim Blair – Friday,April 10,2015 (2:39pm)

Richie Benaud, one of Australia’s finest cricketers and arguably our best cricket broadcaster, has died at 84.

Penrith-born Benaud was deeply involved in two great Australian cricket revivals. The first occurred under his captaincy, when Benaud adopted an attacking approach missing from Australian Test cricket since the retirement in 1948 of Sir Donald Bradman. Benaud’s leadership in the 1960/61 series against the West Indies, which included the first ever tied Test, remains his magnificent legacy. The second revival occurred in the 1970s, when Benaud played a crucial role in the administration and presentation of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket revolution.

An extroverted player, Benaud’s commentary style was spare and understated, and all the more powerful for it. He will be deeply missed.

Tim Blair – Friday,April 10,2015 (2:45am)

Tim Blair – Friday,April 10,2015 (2:41am)

Wednesday’s 2SER show is now available as a podcast. Please click for quality tunes and the usual low-quality Blair commentary. Much thanks to my friend, 2SER producer and Daily Telegraph colleague Sophie Ly, for organising a fun radio half hour.

Former Hawke government minister Peter Walsh has died at the age of 80 after a short illness.

Labor MP Gary Gray, Mr Walsh’s son-in-law, confirmed he passed away in Perth this morning surrounded by his family. Mr Walsh was a West Australian senator for two decades and a finance minister and resources minister in the Hawke cabinet between 1984 and 1990.He was considered by some as key force behind the Labor government’s tough fiscal approach during the 1980s.Tony Abbott said today that Mr Walsh was “a substantive political figure in our national life” who would be remembered as one of the architects of Australia’s era of economic reform.Bill Shorten said that, as a “leading economic minister in that great reforming era”, Mr Walsh was “rightly proud of the remarkable contribution he made to the opening-up of the Australian economy, laying the foundation for the decades of prosperity our nation has enjoyed”....Mr Walsh was born in the Western Australian town of Kellerberrin and grew up in Doodlakine, 220km east of Perth, where he worked as a wheat and sheep farmer…Federal Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said Mr Walsh was “a real pillar of the reforming Hawke Labor government”....“When Australia in 1986 was confronted with a significant fall in our terms of trade, he led the charge in finding about $6 billion in savings in just one budget – a massive and very challenging undertaking at that time.” ... Mr Walsh is survived by his wife Rosalie, daughters Karen, Shelley, Anne, Deborah and eleven grandchildren.

[He] came to despise the hand-out, protectionist and regulatory populism of the then Country Party and the sway it held over the fate of the Australian economy in the post-war decades. But Walsh was not selective in his hatred of rent-seekers and protectionists: He despised trade union leaders as much as he despised farm and business leaders for their special interest pleading. And he was just as withering in his critiques of the environmental movement’s anti-growth agenda.His contempt for the Green movement remained with him after he left politics and motivated him to be a founding member of the climate change sceptic lobby. He was a founding member of the Lavoisier Group which disputes the scientific basis on which climate change forecasts are based.Walsh described global warming as “highly speculative science” and argued that those most active in proposing legally binding greenhouse emissions limits as “self-serving propagandists and bureaucrats”.He abhorred the rising influence of the environmental movement on the Labor Party and wrote that “since the 1980s Australian Labor Party policy has been incrementally hijacked by well-heeled, self-indulgent, morally vain and would-be authoritarian activists whom the media often describes as the intelligentsia”. Walsh became increasingly disillusioned by what he saw as modern Labor’s infiltration by “the chattering classes”.

Tony Abbott has offered Richie Benaud’s family a state funeral, saying his death is the “greatest loss for cricket” since Don Bradman died in 2001… The beloved former Australian Test cricket captain, selector and commentator, has passed away at 84 after a battle with skin cancer…In Benaud’s native Sydney, NSW Premier Mike Baird ordered flags be flown at half-mast today as a tribute…Benaud was the first player to score 2000 Test runs and take 200 Test wickets.Benaud’s career statistics:

63 Tests between 1952-64. 2201 runs at 24.45. Highest score of 122. Three centuries; nine half-centuries. 248 wickets at 27.03. Five wickets in an innings 16 times

. “Our country has lost a national treasure,” Cricket Australia chairman Wally Edwards said in a statement…“Richie stood at the top of the game throughout his rich life, first as a record-breaking leg-spinner and captain, and then as cricket’s most famous broadcaster who became the iconic voice of our summer,” he said…Benaud was the one calming, wry constant amid the cacophony of cricket commentary…

Revered and loved for his approach to the game on and off the field, Benaud had been suffering from skin cancer. The combined effects of a car accident before the 2013/14 Ashes and treatment for the disease had kept him from the commentary box for the past two seasons.Benaud managed, however, to rise from his sickbed and voice a brief, touching tribute to Phillip Hughes which was played at the Adelaide Oval before the first Test and a couple of prerecorded segments for Channel 9…When Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket challenged the status quo it did so with the former captain as its anchor. When the war ended Benaud had established himself as the pre-eminent television presence. It was Benaud’s economy and dry humour amid the histrionics and excesses of his commentating partners that separated him from the pack. He had trained as a police roundsman on The Sun in Sydney where he learned from the old hands that it was “pointless writing more than you had been asked to write”. He was the same on television, arguing that there was no need to speak unless you could add to the picture. The Benaud pause, often followed by a slow motion “extraordinary” became an almost trademarked summation of some of cricket’s greater moments on the box.

JONESY: Good to have you here. Bill I noticed that you’re not wearing a red or a blue tie, you’re sans tie this morning.SHORTEN: Yeah, well it’s radio.AMANDA: So you’re going all casual.JONESY: So you’re saying you didn’t make an effort for us Bill? Is that what you’re saying?AMANDA: I bet you would for Karl and Lisa though, wouldn’t you Bill?JONESY: Yeah.SHORTEN: Oh well, it’s morning TV.JONESY: Oh I see.SHORTEN: The Godzilla of media in the morning.AMANDA: You know, it must be hard, I was looking in the paper this morning, there’s a picture of Prime Minister – the British Prime Minister David Cameron, and he’s been making headlines for being on the campaign trail and he’s eating a hotdog with a knife and fork, and everyone’s going what kind of idiot does that? You must be so heavily scrutinised when you’re out and about, what’s – have you been caught doing embarrassing things like eating your own earwax?SHORTEN: Well with everyone being a potential photographer with their mobile phones, it is a freak show some days, but because you’re always – oh and I’m sure, I’m sure that you’ll do something embarrassing, it’s just law of averages, we’re human beings and if someone’s permanently got a camera on you, it will be embarrassing at some point.JONESY: Because what do you think is weirder, David Cameron eating a hotdog with a knife and fork or Tony Abbott just munching into a raw onion?AMANDA: That was odd.SHORTEN: That’s a competition which you’d have to call a dead heat. The raw onion, that’s just weird, but a hotdog with a knife and fork. I mean I suppose if it was a really sloppy hotdog with lots of – I don’t know, no you’d just get a napkin and wrap it up.AMANDA: You’d have to, you just have to keep, you just have to hoe into it, you can’t use a knife and fork.JONESY: There was nothing sloppy about that hotdog.AMANDA: Not in the photo.JONESY: That was an easy pick up.SHORTEN: Yeah no, you just wouldn’t use a knife and fork for a hotdog full stop, and you don’t need a minder to tell you that. Now if I’m ever filmed eating a hotdog with a knife and fork –AMANDA: Make sure you use a fish knife because it’s more posh. But you’ve got a twin brother Robert, are you identical twins?SHORTEN: No, thankfully for him, he’s not identical…AMANDA: It must be hard being in Opposition Bill, because by nature of the job it’s being negative. It’s like a tennis match you say the Government’s stuffing it up, they say well we’re just dealing with the stuff that your government stuffed up last time, and it just goes back and forth, back and forth and it feels like nothing gets done. Is it a frustrating role to be in?SHORTEN: At one level it is – I mean you want to make a difference, you want to help people. When you’re the Opposition though, your job is to hold the Government to account. But at another level it’s not a frustrating job because you do have the chance to stand up for what you believe in. It’s a good job but you’re right occasionally the only thing which you say which is going to get on the news is you saying no to Tony Abbott, and you’ve got your own propositions you want to advance and as we get closer to an election, I’ve got no doubt we’ll get the chance to get more coverage on our alternative view for Australia’s future.JONESY: Maybe you should eat a hotdog filled with a raw onion.AMANDA: A raw hotdog, raw sausage.JONESY: That could be something.SHORTEN: Yeah I don’t have relevance deprivation syndrome.AMANDA: Oh what’s relevance deprivation syndrome, what’s that?SHORTEN: I think it’s an attempt to get attention by doing something really odd.AMANDA: Oh wow.JONESY: Because the last time we had Tony on the show, he didn’t do anything odd at all.Audio: ‘Tony Abbott’ singingJONESY: We didn’t even ask him to do that.AMANDA: We didn’t ask him to sing, he just did.SHORTEN: Really?JONESY: You want to sing Bill?AMANDA: Any 80s songs or anything you’d like to share?SHORTEN: To sing?AMANDA: Sure.SHORTEN: No.AMANDA: Oh ok. You’ve learnt haven’t you? Stick to eating a hotdog with your hands.SHORTEN: Yeah I can do happy birthday well but anyway…JONESY: We’re hardly Alan Jones are we?AMANDA: I know, you could say, ‘I’m going to just be a giant axe murderer’ and we’ll go oh that makes sense. That sounds nice.JONESY: That sounds nice, he’s an axe murderer.AMANDA: He’s a nice man isn’t he?SHORTEN: I reckon you’d probably have a go if I said that, but anyway I don’t think it so it’s all good.AMANDA: Oh good. Maybe the headline will be that you’ve come on to our program to deny the fact that you’re an axe murderer.JONESY: Bill Shorten, and what we’ve learnt about Bill Shorten is you’re not an axe murderer and you don’t eat raw onions, you eat a hotdog with your hands, and you’re not going sing randomly. AMANDA: Well they’re things we didn’t know about you before so we’re happy to know that.

(T)he Renewable Energy Target ... is now a mess of rising energy costs and a distorted electricity market. Renewable electricity generators have received $9 billion in industry subsidies over the 15-year life of the RET, in addition to the price they receive for the electricity they produce. Without change, a further $22 billion will be paid by 2030. In the words of the Warburton Review, the RET is “a cross-subsidy that transfers wealth from electricity consumers and other participants in the electricity market to renewable energy companies"…(I)n 15 years we have incorporated 16,000 GWh of new renewable energy into the RET, leaving just five years to generate another 25,000 GWh to meet the large-scale target of 41,000 GWh. Nobody believes this is possible.If retailers cannot purchase enough certificates, the legislation requires that a penalty charge of $65/MWh be imposed. With retail margins added, this will nearly triple the cost of the scheme to electricity retailers, who will pass it on to consumers. Electricity prices will skyrocket.Everyone with knowledge of the electricity market knows this is a political time bomb about to go off, most likely within 18 months when interim targets are not met…(L)ate last year I developed a detailed reform package for the RET. Since most opposition to reform is based on cuts to the 41,000 GWh large-scale target, my plan is to maintain this but to recognise established hydro-generation in the calculations – essentially Snowy Hydro and Hydro Tasmania – which together produce about 15,000 GWh. There would also be no cap on small-scale solar generation, which is expected to grow to 13,000 GWh. My proposal would ensure the renewable target is achieved, with no penalty charges kicking in....The only losers would be the major wind-energy generators, which are eagerly waiting to build dozens of new wind farms in an effort to meet the target and get on the subsidy gravy train.

How could the Greens be against a renewable energy source such as hydro? All those lovely dams which ...
Oh.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)

Two of NSW Labor’s most senior officials are pushing for an investigation of possible rorting of the 2013 national ballot that saw Bill Shorten elected party leader, after revelations the addresses for dozens of voting papers were altered.NSW Labor assistant secretary John Graham and the state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, Tim Ayres, who is also on the national executive, have written to general secretary Jamie Clements calling for the move.Mr Graham also wants more details about the involvement of Labor Senator Sam Dastyari’s office in changing the mailing addresses of scores of leadership ballots, including to the addresses of an accused branchstacker…In February Fairfax Media revealed that the ALP’s internal Review Tribunal found the mailing addresses for 50 ballot papers in the leadership ballot between Mr Shorten and Anthony Albanese were altered by NSW Labor head office. The changes were made at the request of Michael Buckland, then a staff member of Labor Senator Dastyari, who is a senior member of the right faction that backed Mr Shorten in the ballot.

When asked about the issue and whether he had requested Buckland to change the address Senator Dastyari’s said on ABC radio, “not at all.” “Frankly, it had nothing to do with me.“I wasn’t aware of it,” he said adding that it was a storm in a teacup…Clements said there was no need for an independent audit.“I have provided Mr Ayres and Mr Graham documented proof to assure them that the irregularities identified by the Review Tribunal were isolated to the Auburn electorate alone,” he said.

An independent review has upheld the election of Bill Shorten as federal Labor leader, despite concerns about flaws in the ballot process… The NSW party’s review tribunal found 73 out of 124 changes to branch member postal addresses before ballot had occurred in the Auburn electorate.However, tribunal chairman Greg James QC confirmed on Friday that nothing had emerged from the review to suggest the election of Mr Shorten as leader was flawed.Mr James also found there was no prospect of a further inquiry producing any such suggestion.NSW ALP secretary Jamie Clements said the party’s administrative committee had agreed with Mr James’ finding. But the committee will introduce reforms to the way change of addresses are made in future ballots.

Misinformation not helpful 1.157 Despite the acknowledged deficiencies in the data available, the Chair of the inquiry has unfortunately made comments in the media about the size of the illegal gun market and its impact on crime in the community. Many of the claims made were not substantiated by the evidence to the inquiry, particularly regarding the source of illegal guns and legal gun owners in Australia.1.158 Claims made in the media by the Chair, which The majority of Senators attending the inquiry believe are not substantiated by the evidence, include:

- most illegal guns are not trafficked into Australia, but stolen from registered owners; - many illicit firearms are actually stolen from legitimate sources or taken from the grey market, including the gun used in the Sydney siege.

The hypothesis that illegal guns are mainly stolen from registered gun owners was not supported by the evidence presented to the Committee.

This gesture suggests the problem with Islam isn’t the frightening things done in its name but the fear non-believers have as a result. It is, in the nicest way, an attempt to blame the victim.
Would it not be more useful to have a day in which Muslim women in hijabs and niqabs are invited to walk around the streets in Western clothing instead, as a “social experiment”. Much more useful and to the point.
(Thanks to readers Notch, ABCCharter, dexxter and many others.)

On the The Bolt Report on Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 3pm.
Editorial: How did the Abbott Government start a debate about paying more tax, not less?
Guest: Immigration Minister Peter Dutton answers the question he’s never asked about sexual abuse of children in detention.
The panel: former diplomat and Victorian Liberal executive member Georgina Downer and former Labor campaign guru Bruce Hawker.
NewsWatch: Australian columnist and Menzies Research Centre head Nick Cater. On the word the ABC dare not utter, and more
On tax, smears, failed states. Barack Obama’s astonish global warming idiocy and more.The videos of the shows appear here.

South Australian Coroner Mark Johns has delivered a devastating, humane and critically important finding on the death of four-year-old Chloe Valentine. It is a finding that - thank God - challenges the dangerous modern belief that families much be kept together almost regardless of the fact that the mother is an utterly selfish monster. It is a finding that challenges other modern myths - on soft parenting, on challenging “authority”, on the rights agenda, on welfare dependency, on “harm minimisation”, on adoption as a last resort, on children as possessions. It lifts a rock to expose the farcically inadequate attempts by society to deal with the collapse of the family unit, with student social workers and others barely out of school trying to act as super parents.
The whole report deserves reading. I’ve tried to extract just the most relevant passages. Please read it:

INQUEST INTO THE DEATH OF CHLOE LEE VALENTINE

1.1. Chloe Lee Valentine died on 20 January 2012. She was 4 years and 5 months old at the date of her death. A post-mortem examination was conducted by forensic pathologist, Dr Karen Heath, who provided a report giving the cause of death as ‘closed head injury with possible contributing factor extensive subcutaneous and intramuscular haemorrhage’, and I so find.1.2. Dr Heath said it was not possible to determine from the neuropathological findings whether the head injury observed was a result of one episode of trauma or the cumulative effect of several episodes of head injury. She said that other findings at autopsy included extensive bruising of the scalp and face, back, chest, abdomen and upper and lower limbs… Dr Heath said she had never seen this degree of bruising in a child before in her experience as a forensic pathologist and had only ever seen it once in an adult .2. The events of mid January 20122.1. In mid January 2012 Chloe was living in a house at Ingle Farm with her mother Ashlee Polkinghorne and Ashlee’s partner of the time, Benjamin McPartland. Ashlee Polkinghorne and McPartland had purchased a 50cc dirt bike for Chloe. The bike was far too big for her and she could barely touch the ground. She weighed 17 kilograms at the time of her death but the bike weighed over 50 kilograms. Nevertheless, McPartland repeatedly put Chloe on the bike despite her being unable to stop the bike without falling off it to the ground. Ashlee Polkinghorne filmed these episodes using her mobile phone. The footage shows McPartland putting her back on the bike and, to use the words of the sentencing judge, Justice Kelly, ‘virtually throwing Chloe back on the bike after she had fallen off’. This pattern of conduct started on Tuesday, 17 January 2012. It continued until Thursday, 19 January 2012 on and off. On that day, certainly prior to 3:39pm, Chloe was rendered unconscious… Despite the fact that she was unconscious they waited another 8½ hours before making the ambulance call. By their own admission, during that intervening period they occupied themselves by using Facebook, doing some internet banking, searching the internet as to what to do when a person was rendered unconscious, and smoked cannabis.2.2. The sentencing judge found that the conduct of repeatedly placing Chloe on the motorbike and the failure to act by obtaining medical assistance for her once she was unconscious amounted to a very serious example of the crime of manslaughter by criminal neglect… McPartland was given a head sentence of 7 years with a non-parole period of 4 years and 2 months, and Ashlee Polkinghorne was sentenced to a head sentence of 8 years with a non-parole period of 4 years and 9 months…Ashlee Polkinghorne could be heard in the video showing Chloe’s torment to be laughing at the child and her efforts to ride and maintain control of the motorbike.3.2. That complete failure to show the love and care that is to be expected of a mother towards a child did not come out of nowhere. There had been many previous warning signs that Ashlee Polkinghorne was unfit to be Chloe’s mother and guardian. The warning signs had been made known to the child protection authority in this State which is known as Families SA…

South Australian Coroner Mark Johns has summed up well the Chloe Valentine scandal, and particularly our manic obsession with keeping dysfunctional families together.
That obsession is best captured by these statistics:

Dr Sammut points out that the number of children in residential care throughout Australia, and in this he is referring not to foster care but to the residential care model I have described above, has increased by 56% in the last 15 years. By the time children find their way into residential care facilities all other options have well and truly been exhausted. Dr Sammut described these facilities as ‘modern day asylums’ . Dr Sammut gives the following statistics. 61 Australian children were adopted by non-relatives and 53 by foster carers in 2009-10 which was a total of 114 adoptions, compared to more than 8,500 adoptions in the early 1970s . Dr Sammut compares Australia with England where 3,200 children were adopted from out of care in 2009-10. ... Dr Sammut calculated that if Australian children in care were adopted at the same rate as in England, there would have been approximately 1,700 adoptions from care in Australia in 2009-10 rather than the quoted number of something less than 114. .. If Australian children in care were adopted at the same rate as in the United States, there would have been approximately 4,800 adoptions from care in Australia in 2009-10.

Share This: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was interviewed today on ABC, CNN and NBC. "I think this deal is a dream deal for Iran, and its a nightmare deal for the world"Video: GPOPosted by The Prime Minister of Israel on Sunday, 5 April 2015

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Prime Minister Tony Abbott has officially opened our headspace Brookvale centre this morning. The centre is one of over...
Posted by headspace on Monday, 6 April 2015

THE Abbott Government faces a Budget crisis: we’re running out of the money most Australians need for their retirement.
We’re talking big money — an average cash handout of at least $400,000 for each person on a full age pension. And that doesn’t even include their hospital and aged care, or the seniors health card that lets them buy cheap medicines and get discounts even for rail travel.

There is no way taxpaying workers can afford all that when by 2050 they’ll be responsible for nearly twice as many people over 65 than today.
(Read full article here.)

LABOR’S leaders still can’t admit it’s their own stupidity — not their union mates — that’s killing them.
Instead, there they go again, pretending voters actually care who decides Labor policies, rather than how lunatic their policies actually are.
I can understand their scrabbling for a scapegoat, of course. Labor was buried in last year’s federal election after six years of disastrous government and now is travelling even worse under Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.
It somehow went backwards in the by-election for former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s seat and was destroyed in Tasmania’s state election. It lost seats in South Australia’s election and last weekend was reduced to a humiliating 22 per cent of the vote in the rerun Senate election in Western Australia.

But hear Labor talk about everything but the Labor policies voters rejected. Shorten says Labor should just make the party more diverse by no longer demanding party members be union members.
On Wednesday, Labor president Jenny McAllister agreed union bosses should bow out and let “far more people to have a say in who represents Labor in the Senate”.
Are they serious? How many Australians turned off Labor because of its membership policies rather than because Labor let in 50,000 boat people, hit us with a carbon tax, preached hate politics, bungled a home insulation program with deadly results and left us with deficits of $123 billion?
It’s the policies, stupid.
Correction.
(Read full article here.)

Many of Australia’s most prominent Jews face a terrible reality that I’ve warned about for almost a decade: the natural home of the anti-Jewish bigot is now the Left. Too many prominent Jewish intellectuals here have pampered their enemy.ABC chairman Jim Spigelman concedes the point:

Spigelman: My father was a bit of a lefty from his Polish days because Jews in Poland tended to be on the left ‘cause all the anti-Semites were then on the right. That’s exactly the reverse today. Throsby: Is it?

And, right on time, former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr takes the stage.
Carr is not an anti-Semite, but his views on the Jewish lobby are absurd and dangerously close to an anti-Semitic trope:

BOB CARR: ... And what I’ve done is to spell out how the extremely conservative instincts of the pro-Israel lobby in Melbourne was exercised through the then-Prime Minister’s office.... I found it very frustrating that we couldn’t issue, for example, a routine expression of concern about the spread of Israeli settlements on the West Bank....SARAH FERGUSON: You’re saying that the Melbourne Jewish lobby had a direct impact on foreign policy as it was operated from inside Julia Gillard’s cabinet?BOB CARR: Yeah, I would call it the Israeli lobby - I think that’s important. But certainly they enjoyed extraordinary influence. I had to resist it and my book tells the story of that resistance coming to a climax when there was a dispute on the floor of caucus about my recommendation that we don’t block the Palestinian bid for increased non-state status at the United Nations.SARAH FERGUSON: They’re still a very small group of people. How do you account for them wielding so much power? BOB CARR: I think party donations and a program of giving trips to MPs and journalists to Israel. But that’s not to condemn them. I mean, other interest groups do the same thing. But it needs to be highlighted because I think it reached a very unhealthy level. I think the great mistake of the pro-Israel lobby in Melbourne is to express an extreme right-wing Israeli view rather than a more tolerant liberal Israeli view, and in addition to that, to seek to win on everything, to block the Foreign Minister of Australia through their influence with the Prime Minister’s office, from even making the most routine criticism of Israeli settlement policy using the kind of language that a Conservative Foreign secretary from the UK would use in a comparable statement at the same time.

Carr is not wrong to say there is a Jewish lobby, or Israel lobby, just as there are other ethnic and religious lobby groups, including Aboriginal ones. The Jewish lobby is more organised that most, and on certain issues speaks with more unity than most, too.
This can come with a risk, as we now see in the debate over the Abbott Government’s plans to reform the Racial Discrimination Act to allow more free speech. Jewish community leaders have been the strongest opponents of this change, and base much of their argument on an issue of particular concern to Jews: that such a change would permit Holocaust denial. I suspect most non-Jews also loathe Holocaust deniers but would not be so quick to say they should be gagged by law - and that the rest of us should be gagged from arguing other propositions as a consequence. The danger here is that Jewish leaders are seen to be arguing for an illiberal ban to the benefit of their own community, but at the cost of the wider one. Such tribalism comes at a risk in a multi-ethnic, multi-faith nation.
I think it is fair to make these points. But Bob Carr’s comments go further - dangerously further.
He is singling out the “Israel lobby” as having had a more “unhealthy” influence than other such groups in that it had “influence with the Prime Minister’s office” under Labor, seeking “to block the Foreign Minister of Australia” from aiding Palestinian interests. This influence, claims Carr, is exercised through “party donations and a program of giving trips to MPs and journalists to Israel”, trips which indeed both Gillard and I have received.
Here is where Carr oversteps.
Carr completely ignores the reality that many supporters of Israel in the case he raises have not been bought, bribed or otherwise influenced by “unhealthy” lobbying, but have reached their opinion by judging on the merits of the argument. They see a democracy threatened by terrorism, an open society challenged by a closed one, and they decide accordingly. Yet this difference of opinion is portrayed by Carr as just the evil product of “unhealthy” Jewish influence peddling.
It is a joke to believe Gillard as prime minister could be further influenced by the offer of trips from Melbourne Jews. Politicians and journalists are also offered trips to the Muslim Middle East, yet Carr does not declare those “unhealthy”.
And how much influence did those Melbourne Jews have really? Carr boasts that he actually defeated Gillard on the issue by leading a caucus revolt against Gillard’s position.
That raises Carr’s dangerous double standards - to decry a “unhealthy” a Jewish influence he defeated while saying nothing about the more troubling Muslim influence to which he surrendered - and Labor with him.Labor politicians have done dangerous favors for Islamist extremists like Sheik Hilali, revoking moves to throw him out in exchange for votes, but Carr has not criticised that as “unhealthy”. Labor made a politician of a Muslim ethnic boss and supporter of the Syrian dictator in exchange for votes, but Carr did not say this was “unhealthy”. Nor did Carr say it was “unhealthy” when even Liberal Prime Minister John Howard appointed a Muslim Community Reference Group to advise him - one third of whose members were supporters of the pro-terrorist Hezbollah.Carr did not denounce this “unhealthy” influence, either:

Australia’s senior Islamic cleric threatened to withdraw community support for federal Labor in Western Sydney if union leader Paul Howes replaced Bob Carr in the Senate, a leaked email reveals. The email, written on behalf of the Grand Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, by his chief political adviser, accused Mr Howes of a “blind bias for Israel” and said that if he was appointed to the Senate, community support for Labor that was mustered for the federal election would be withdrawn. The email was sent to MPs and ­officials on September 9… Mr Howes, the national secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, withdrew from the contest ...

Note that the Mufti has shown support for Hamas.
But let’s talk about the truly unhealthy influence in the very case Carr discusses - a bid by Palestinians for greater recognition.
Labor ditched Israel in that instance not so much out of principle but out of Labor self-interest. As former Labor speech-writer Troy Bramston wrote at the time after talking to the players, Labor feared the influence of the Muslim lobby and the votes it could muster in key Sydney marginal seats:

And, critically, there is the growing Muslim and Christian make-up of several key western Sydney Labor seats, which have exposed MPs to different points of view on the Middle East. Some sections of the party suggest Victorian Labor is too close to the Israel lobby and does not fully understand the underlying changes in Sydney’s outer suburbs.

Did Carr denounce that “unhealthy” influence? No. He in fact was among the first to give in to it:

BUT of all reasons given, the worst and most repeated was as the Daily Telegraph said: “NSW Right MPs ... were more concerned a no vote at the UN would offend Middle East and Muslim communities in their fragile southwest Sydney seats.” The Sydney Morning Herald heard the same: “Many MPs in western Sydney, who are already fearful of losing their seats, are coming under pressure from constituents with a Middle East background."… Carr reportedly stressed “the electoral problems in Sydney” to Gillard, and The Australian reported the “demographically challenged” Water Minister, Tony Burke, insisted on not rejecting the Palestinian resolution. Burke’s “demographic challenge” is that the proportion of Muslim voters in Watson, his Sydney seat, has rocketed to an astonishing 20 per cent… In fact, of the 20 seats with the most Muslim voters, Labor holds all but one.

That’s why Carr’s attack on the Jewish lobby is so sinister. He exaggerates its power, falsely assumes those who agree with the lobby have been bought, and meanwhile is silent on the rise of more troubling lobby that has influenced Labor - the Muslim lobby, which includes supporters of extremists.
Something sick is at work in the Left. It’s not just Jews who should be alarmed.
UPDATE
What a disgraceful breach of confidence and a shameless betrayal:

Bob Carr has published private text messages between himself and Julia Gillard to reveal the “extraordinary” level of influence the pro-Israel lobby had on the former prime minister’s office. In a remarkable disclosure of private conversations, Mr Carr said he chose to publish the text messages in his book – Diary of a Foreign Minister – without getting Ms Gillard’s permission, because to do so was in the national interest.

Carr wasn’t the foreign minister of Australia, seeking to advance the nation’s interests. It seems to me he was merely an embedded journalist, seeking material to advance his own.
The exchange:

Reproducing private text messages, Mr Carr suggests Ms Gillard’s support of Israel was so immovable that she would not even allow him to change Australia’s vote on what he considered to be a minor UN motion. “Julia – motion on Lebanon oil spill raises no Palestinian or Israel security issues. In that context I gave my commitment to Lebanon,” Mr Carr writes in a text message.“No reason has been given to me to change,” Ms Gillard reportedly replies.“Julia – not so simple,” Mr Carr responds. “I as Foreign Minister gave my word. I was entitled to because it had nothing to do with Palestinian status or security of Israel.” Ms Gillard shuts him down in a final terse message: “Bob… my jurisdiction on UN resolutions isn’t confined to ones on Palestine and Israel.”

Just unpick for a moment what he’s saying. He’s talking about the Jewish lobby, he’s talking about a difference of opinion between him and the Prime Minister. Why can’t they have a difference of opinion on a matter related to Israeli policy? No, if there’s a difference of opinion, the Prime Minister has to be controlled or influenced by someone. So the Prime Minister has to be wrong ‘cause she’s controlled by the Jewish lobby. How does the Jewish lobby control the Prime Minister? Through donations to the ALP and sending people to Israel. I mean, give me a break. I mean, would anyone sort of seriously accept that? I mean, I’m very flattered. By the way, the Jewish lobby he’s referring to is the Australia-Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. He’s referred to it in The Australian newspaper, so he’s referring to me directly. But, you know, as flattered as I am, this is really a figment of his imagination. I mean, Julia Gillard is an independent-thinking woman. She can come to her own conclusions without being influenced by the Jewish lobby and I suppose the Jewish lobby, according to Bob, ... has the current Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, under its influence. After all, he’s adopted a very pro-Israel attitude.

2016 – The Paravur temple accident in which a devastating fire caused by the explosion of firecrackers stored for Vishu, kills more than one hundred people out of the thousands gathered for seventh day of Bhadrakali worship.

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” - Hebrews 1:3

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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him."Luke 23:27

Amid the rabble rout which hounded the Redeemer to his doom, there were some gracious souls whose bitter anguish sought vent in wailing and lamentations--fit music to accompany that march of woe. When my soul can, in imagination, see the Saviour bearing his cross to Calvary, she joins the godly women and weeps with them; for, indeed, there is true cause for grief--cause lying deeper than those mourning women thought. They bewailed innocence maltreated, goodness persecuted, love bleeding, meekness about to die; but my heart has a deeper and more bitter cause to mourn. My sins were the scourges which lacerated those blessed shoulders, and crowned with thorn those bleeding brows: my sins cried "Crucify him! crucify him!" and laid the cross upon his gracious shoulders. His being led forth to die is sorrow enough for one eternity: but my having been his murderer, is more, infinitely more, grief than one poor fountain of tears can express.

Why those women loved and wept it were not hard to guess: but they could not have had greater reasons for love and grief than my heart has. Nain's widow saw her son restored--but I myself have been raised to newness of life. Peter's wife's mother was cured of the fever--but I of the greater plague of sin. Out of Magdalene seven devils were cast--but a whole legion out of me. Mary and Martha were favoured with visits--but he dwells with me. His mother bare his body--but he is formed in me the hope of glory. In nothing behind the holy women in debt, let me not be behind them in gratitude or sorrow.

"Love and grief my heart dividing,

With my tears his feet I'll lave--

Constant still in heart abiding,

Weep for him who died to save."

Evening

The words are capable of being translated, "thy goodness hath made me great." David gratefully ascribed all his greatness not to his own goodness, but the goodness of God. "Thy providence," is another reading; and providence is nothing more than goodness in action. Goodness is the bud of which providence is the flower, or goodness is the seed of which providence is the harvest. Some render it, "thy help," which is but another word for providence; providence being the firm ally of the saints, aiding them in the service of their Lord. Or again, "thy humility hath made me great." "Thy condescension" may, perhaps, serve as a comprehensive reading, combining the ideas mentioned, including that of humility. It is God's making himself little which is the cause of our being made great. We are so little, that if God should manifest his greatness without condescension, we should be trampled under his feet; but God, who must stoop to view the skies, and bow to see what angels do, turns his eye yet lower, and looks to the lowly and contrite, and makes them great. There are yet other readings, as for instance, the Septuagint, which reads, "thy discipline"--thy fatherly correction--"hath made me great;" while the Chaldee paraphrase reads, "thy word hath increased me." Still the idea is the same. David ascribes all his own greatness to the condescending goodness of his Father in heaven. May this sentiment be echoed in our hearts this evening while we cast our crowns at Jesus' feet, and cry, "thy gentleness hath made me great." How marvellous has been our experience of God's gentleness! How gentle have been his corrections! How gentle his forbearance! How gentle his teachings! How gentle his drawings! Meditate upon this theme, O believer. Let gratitude be awakened; let humility be deepened; let love be quickened ere thou fallest asleep tonight.

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Today's reading: 1 Samuel 13-14, Luke 10:1-24 (NIV)

Samuel Rebukes Saul

1 Saul was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned over Israel forty-two years.

2 Saul chose three thousand men from Israel; two thousand were with him at Mikmash and in the hill country of Bethel, and a thousand were with Jonathan at Gibeah in Benjamin. The rest of the men he sent back to their homes.

3 Jonathan attacked the Philistine outpost at Geba, and the Philistines heard about it. Then Saul had the trumpet blown throughout the land and said, "Let the Hebrews hear!" 4 So all Israel heard the news: "Saul has attacked the Philistine outpost, and now Israel has become obnoxious to the Philistines." And the people were summoned to join Saul at Gilgal....

Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-Two

1 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.2 He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. 3 Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. 4 Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.

5 "When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house.' 6If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. 7 Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house....

1 Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. 2And they began to accuse him, saying, "We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king."

3 So Pilate asked Jesus, "Are you the king of the Jews?"

"You have said so," Jesus replied.

4 Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, "I find no basis for a charge against this man."

5 But they insisted, "He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here."

6 On hearing this, Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean. 7When he learned that Jesus was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time....

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About Me

I'm author of History in a Year by the Conservative Voice aka History of the World in a Year by the Conservative Voice.

I'm the Conservative Voice.

I'm looking to make contact with those who might use my skill.

I have an m-audio mobile pre amp fed by the audiotechnica 2041sp condensor mic pack. Prior to 15/4/06, I'd used a Shure sm-58 that required a nuclear blast to register a sound or the internal mic of my aged imac, which has a penchance to recording my breathing. I also used a Griffin itrip, until the community convinced me it was not hiding my talent as well as the other mics.

I am a Writer and an occasional Math Teacher (Sir, what's the occasion?). I like to sing, having no instrumental talent (cannot even clap in time, and yes, I'm aware singing badly IS obnoxious).

I have performed the finale to Les Miserables before an audience of 500. I have also sung before a similar audience (students, parents) renditions of 'I Will' (Beatles), 'Mr Cairo' (Jon Vangelis) and 'I am Australian' (Seekers). Now I seek another profession because the audience hates me ..